1. Field of the Invention
This invention is directed to improvements in a food cooking apparatus in general and more specifically to improvements in a rotisserie-type food cooking apparatus having at least one rotatable element for supporting a food product. More specifically, several features particularly useful for rotisserie cooking include automatic control of rotisserie cooking operations to provide simplicity of operation and consistency in the quality of cooked food products.
2. Description of the Prior Art
Use of a rotatable element to support a food product for cooking is well known. Such rotatable elements are often referred to as rotisseries, spits, skewers and a host of other names. For simplicity, the term rotisserie will be used with the understanding that this term is intended to cover all forms of rotatable elements which support food products or to which food products may be attached for cooking in all types of cooking environments including gas or electric ovens, barbecues, microwave ovens and a variety of other cooking environments. Many of these prior art rotisseries lack sophisticated controls to ensure cooking quality and consistency, and instead, depend upon user guess work. While this may be acceptable to some extent in a backyard barbecue, it is not acceptable in commercial use where quality and consistency are highly desirable.
Typical prior art rotisseries either operate the rotor whenever cooking is taking place or simply provide manually actuable on/off switches for a rotor and simple temperature control dials for selecting a desired temperature. If more than one cooking mode is desired in a cooking operation, for example, sear and cook modes, a user must first select the sear temperature, wait a desired amount of time, and then manually change the temperature to the desired cooking temperature. This requires the user to keep track of time for each cooking mode, which increases the risk of inconsistency while occupying the user's time.
Another feature used in prior art rotisseries is a fan located inside a cooking chamber to circulate air within the cooking chamber. Typically, the fan is always operating when cooking is taking place. However, in the event the food product is being held at a holding temperature while being displayed, continued operation of the fan may dry out the food product.
Another disadvantage of prior art rotisseries, especially rotisseries employing more than one rotatable element, is the difficulty of removing or replacing rotatable elements. It is often necessary in a commercial cooking environment to remove one rotatable element, attach or detach a food product, replace that rotatable element and rotate the rotisserie to a position that will easily enable a user to attach or detach a food product to/from the next rotatable element in an efficient manner.
When a food product is being cooked, an interruption in the cooking cycle may occur when a temporary power down condition occurs. This temporary power down condition may be caused by any of a number of causes which temporarily interrupts power provided to the cooking elements and prevent their operation. A problem arises when the temporary power down condition is terminated regarding whether or not to continue cooking the food product that was being cooked when the power down condition occurred. One solution, though obviously not a desirable one for social and economic reasons, is to discard any partly cooked food products. A more desirable solution is to determine whether or not to continue cooking based on information which provides an accurate indication of whether it is desirable or feasible to continue cooking the food product. One solution suggested by prior art devices is to base this determination on the amount of time that elapses between the temporary power down condition and return to a normal power condition. While this is better than discarding food products, it does not always provide an accurate indication of whether it is desirable or feasible to continue the cook cycle. Time may be a relevant parameter to be considered when determining whether to continue a cook cycle. A more relevant parameter to be considered is temperature. If the power is down for a short period of time but the temperature in the cooking device drops a significant amount, then upon return to normal power conditions, there may be a significant amount of cooking time lost while the temperature is returned to the desired cooking temperature.
In order to overcome these and other disadvantages of prior art rotisseries, the present invention provides a rotisserie control device which automates several features of the rotisserie cooking operation.